The ratings were released April 24 after a delay due to lawsuits, TEA officials said.
The announcement follows an April 3 ruling by Texas’ 15th Court of Appeals, which overturned a lower court's injunction that had blocked the 2023 ratings for over a year.
In August 2023, over 100 school districts sued TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, arguing the agency’s revamped accountability system was “unlawful” and would unfairly harm school districts.
“The rating released is based on data from the 2022-2023 school year," HISD Superintendent Roger Brown said in an April 24 emailed statement. "It does not reflect the effort and progress happening right now throughout the district."
The state’s A-F accountability system was designed to measure whether students are ready for the next grade level and how well each district prepares them for success after high school, Community Impact previously reported.
“For far too long, families, educators and communities have been denied access to information about the performance of their schools, thanks to frivolous lawsuits paid for by tax dollars filed by those who disagreed with the statutory goal of raising career readiness expectations to help students,” Morath said in an April 24 news release.
TEA officials said the methods of calculating 2022-23 ratings were “updated to more accurately reflect performance.”
HISD received 74 out of 100 points for 2022-23, TEA data shows.
Brown noted he believed the 2022-23 scores will ultimately help officials identify challenges the district has faced related to the ratings.
"We understand that there were many complexities surrounding the 2023 accountability rating process, including: changes to scoring methodology; increased performance thresholds, and the use of new [State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness] assessments," Brown said. "All of these changes were applied after testing had been completed. We are treating this rating as a challenge. The rating is an opportunity for us to examine what’s working, what’s not, and how we can better serve our students.”
The breakdown
According to the TEA’s latest accountability report, nearly 11% of traditional school districts across Texas earned an "A" rating, while 40% earned a "B," 32% received a "C," 14% earned a "D" and 3% earned an "F."
HISD had 45,525 students enrolled in 2022-23. During this time, about 48.5% of students were economically disadvantaged, 11.8% were in special education programs and 11.6% were emergent bilingual students, according to TEA data.
Out of the 46 HISD campuses operating during the 2022-23 school year, the following grades were assigned:
- Four earned an A
- 10 earned a B
- 17 earned a C
- 13 earned a D
- Two earned an F
Texas school districts last received ratings through the A-F system for the 2021-22 school year, when about one-third of districts statewide earned an "A" and slightly more than half earned a "B," according to prior reporting.
The following breakdown represents HISD's ratings since the 2017-18 school year:
- 2017-18: not rated due to Hurricane Harvey
- 2018-19: HISD received 88 points, or a B
- 2019-20: not rated due to the COVID-19 pandemic
- 2020-21: not rated due to the COVID-19 pandemic
- 2021-22: HISD received 82 points, or a B
- 2022-23: HISD received 74 points, or a C
What’s next
The TEA remains blocked from issuing ratings for the 2023-24 school year due to a separate lawsuit, which is pending in the state appeals court. Morath also said the TEA intends to release ratings for 2024-25 school year on Aug. 15, per state law.
“A-F ratings are very public, and so that is a leadership challenge that our leaders bear, but this is the cross that we bear for being publicly funded and having the public’s children in our schools. It’s up to us to operate with the highest degree of transparency to deliver the best outcomes that we can for our kids,” Morath said April 22.
Emily Lincke, Jake Norman and Hannah Norton contributed to this report.
